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LE

Indeed, they'll just be raising your/our taxes to pay for the Brexit dividend. You couldn't make this up, it's like "The Thick Of It" meets "Till Death Us Do Part" meets "The Twilight Zone"

When routine bites hard, And ambitions are low, And resentment rides high, But emotions won't grow...By voting on this post with a SABC I confirm that I am a more than a bit stupid and an all round loser.

LE

Well from a Labour perspective I have a sneaky feeling that the emphasis will change very soon. I heard last night, that Corbyn has been urged not to sign up to the internationally recognised formula. I missed the name but it chimes with the Israeli Zionist demand that Labour should do so. FOI v FOP; seconds out.......

For denial try seeing your posts when I told you what your hero had said, some button mashing there. You're still a bit of a Trigger though eh?

When routine bites hard, And ambitions are low, And resentment rides high, But emotions won't grow...By voting on this post with a SABC I confirm that I am a more than a bit stupid and an all round loser.

LE

Well Labour did kill off Rover and it's been defended on the basis they were shit cars- that was 6000 plus the ancilliary and BMW did quite well out of the deal. Now does it matter if another 13,000 workers go especially since Greenpeace is determined to close down VW here. I mean why change the habits of a lifetime. I mean pretty soon the EU will have us where it wants us, denuded, dependent, but of course that was always the plan, cheap labour here to pay for Europe

LE

To get a real understanding of the implications of a no-deal Brexit for the majority of the UK, I spoke over the weekend to the chairman of one of the country’s biggest and best-known supermarket chains. Supermarkets are the great levellers: we may not all own a car, or care about bankers having passporting rights, or visit other European countries for our holidays, but we certainly all step inside one supermarket or another in our day-to-day lives. It seemed like a good place to start, even if what I found out was distinctly unsettling.

The supermarket chairman – who I will keep anonymous – started the conversation by reminding me that the EU provides 30 per cent of what his supermarket sells in food and groceries. If we were to leave the European Union and trade on WTO rules, his supermarket is working on the basis that tariffs will be levied on goods being imported to the UK from the EU. So, for example, cheese will attract a 44 per cent tariff, beef a 40 per cent tariff, lamb a 40 per cent tariff, chicken a 22 per cent tariff, apples a 15 per cent tariff and grapes a 20 per cent tariff, and so on.

Not all of the costs of the increased tariffs would be passed directly onto the consumer but, he said, “we will roughly see a 10 per cent rise in food prices and the impact on fresh food will be particularly disastrous because it is more expensive to bring it in from the rest of the world than from the EU”.

Those who he expects to suffer most are customers on low incomes: “The British consumer will have a big cut to their standard of living, particularly for people at the bottom of the income scale, for whom food is a bigger proportion of their spending,” he told me. But isn’t this all more “Project Fear”? His response: “Very quickly people will see it is not Project Fear but Project Reality – this is complete madness.”

Jacob Rees-Mogg and other Brexiteers have suggested the UK could simply apply 0 per cent tariffs to goods coming from the EU – but there is no guarantee that, if there is no deal, we will get 0 per cent tariffs in the opposite direction on the goods our firms are selling into the EU. This supermarket executive – who is one of the most respected people in UK business so knows a thing or two about dealmaking – told me on that point that “if you simply unilaterally say you are going to have low tariffs, you have no leverage” when it comes to making an agreement.

This supermarket chairman took a very dim view of that suggestion as a strategy: if the UK did this, he said, “nobody would trust that we would keep our obligations as we go around the rest of the world seeking new trade agreements”. The point he makes is that if we renege on our financial obligations to the EU, no one will have faith that we will meet our obligations to them under any trade future agreement.

So this is the practical reality for households of a no-deal Brexit. The fact that we are no closer now to any proposition on Brexit commanding a majority in the House of Commons makes that no-deal scenario more likely. Remember, the Brexiteers asserted there would be a deal throughout the Vote Leave campaign – so whatever the government has a mandate for, it is not this.

The reason we're still borrowing £770 million a week is because Gordon (no boom or bust) Brown tried to run the economy on pixie dust. At the peak of his stupidity, we were borrowing a trifling £3 billion a week. The Tories have at least got our borrowing down to a quarter of that inherited from that financially illiterate c*nt Brown.

Tying Brown's financial incompetence to leaving the EU does rather look like comparing apples and pears.

LE

To get a real understanding of the implications of a no-deal Brexit for the majority of the UK, I spoke over the weekend to the chairman of one of the country’s biggest and best-known supermarket chains. Supermarkets are the great levellers: we may not all own a car, or care about bankers having passporting rights, or visit other European countries for our holidays, but we certainly all step inside one supermarket or another in our day-to-day lives. It seemed like a good place to start, even if what I found out was distinctly unsettling.

The supermarket chairman – who I will keep anonymous – started the conversation by reminding me that the EU provides 30 per cent of what his supermarket sells in food and groceries. If we were to leave the European Union and trade on WTO rules, his supermarket is working on the basis that tariffs will be levied on goods being imported to the UK from the EU. So, for example, cheese will attract a 44 per cent tariff, beef a 40 per cent tariff, lamb a 40 per cent tariff, chicken a 22 per cent tariff, apples a 15 per cent tariff and grapes a 20 per cent tariff, and so on.

Not all of the costs of the increased tariffs would be passed directly onto the consumer but, he said, “we will roughly see a 10 per cent rise in food prices and the impact on fresh food will be particularly disastrous because it is more expensive to bring it in from the rest of the world than from the EU”.

Those who he expects to suffer most are customers on low incomes: “The British consumer will have a big cut to their standard of living, particularly for people at the bottom of the income scale, for whom food is a bigger proportion of their spending,” he told me. But isn’t this all more “Project Fear”? His response: “Very quickly people will see it is not Project Fear but Project Reality – this is complete madness.”

Jacob Rees-Mogg and other Brexiteers have suggested the UK could simply apply 0 per cent tariffs to goods coming from the EU – but there is no guarantee that, if there is no deal, we will get 0 per cent tariffs in the opposite direction on the goods our firms are selling into the EU. This supermarket executive – who is one of the most respected people in UK business so knows a thing or two about dealmaking – told me on that point that “if you simply unilaterally say you are going to have low tariffs, you have no leverage” when it comes to making an agreement.

This supermarket chairman took a very dim view of that suggestion as a strategy: if the UK did this, he said, “nobody would trust that we would keep our obligations as we go around the rest of the world seeking new trade agreements”. The point he makes is that if we renege on our financial obligations to the EU, no one will have faith that we will meet our obligations to them under any trade future agreement.

So this is the practical reality for households of a no-deal Brexit. The fact that we are no closer now to any proposition on Brexit commanding a majority in the House of Commons makes that no-deal scenario more likely. Remember, the Brexiteers asserted there would be a deal throughout the Vote Leave campaign – so whatever the government has a mandate for, it is not this.

LE

The reason we're still borrowing £770 million a week is because Gordon (no boom or bust) Brown tried to run the economy on pixie dust. At the peak of his stupidity, we were borrowing a trifling £3 billion a week. The Tories have at least got our borrowing down to a quarter of that inherited from that financially illiterate c*nt Brown.

Tying Brown's financial incompetence to leaving the EU does rather look like comparing apples and pears.

Drivel, not in the least bit conversant with what was happening at the time.
Apparently no idea what's happening in the present either. Constantly repeating the same old poo, doesn't and won't make it right.

LE

LE

With the return of Farage.
The man of the people and all that. Is there any any chance that he'll manage to tell us an actual benefit of Brexit.
Something would be good. Anything, anything other than taking back control which we obviously aren't.

And as for the WTO making us rule makers. When did we take control of that organisation. Did we manage that coup while everyone was distracted by brexit.
Good move.

LE

On this board it's normally Leave voters saying it's Remain voters, who then reply at an opportune moment, after one of the swivel eyed loon Britain First types spouts off for instance, that they're glad it wasn't about immigration.

I don't mind putting my hands up at all and don't get all button mashy....

When routine bites hard, And ambitions are low, And resentment rides high, But emotions won't grow...By voting on this post with a SABC I confirm that I am a more than a bit stupid and an all round loser.

LE

Drivel, not in the least bit conversant with what was happening at the time.
Apparently no idea what's happening in the present either. Constantly repeating the same old poo, doesn't and won't make it right.

When routine bites hard, And ambitions are low, And resentment rides high, But emotions won't grow...By voting on this post with a SABC I confirm that I am a more than a bit stupid and an all round loser.

LE

Basically next Week Farage is going live to "rescue" Brexit-want's May gone and someone who believes in Brexit at the helm. Bojo, JRM "amongst others" were mooted. Says' no problem with WTO status, but basically points out the the relatively small amount of trade influenced by the EU. Vine was positively deferential